Sunday, June 17, 2012
gaia 2.0
Just finished reading Tim Flannery's 'Here on Earth' (click here for a good review). I think I might call in Gaia 2.0. I never really paid much attention to the James Lovelock book back in the 1970s, but I liked this one, or maybe I'm just paying more attention.
A really good short history of the world, from an ecological point of view. A few takeaways:
All in all, a good read, not too preachy, and with a new look and a positive approach in that we don't need to try to undo what's happened, but just intelligently take stock and make moves based on that. Most of these types of books are anti-science. This is pro-science, but use it for productive things: sequestering carbon in the soil where it can aid agriculture (not in caverns where it's useless), and maybe even, when and if it becomes possible, bring back the mammoth!
A really good short history of the world, from an ecological point of view. A few takeaways:
- It's not just that we're screwing the world up now, we(humans) have always been screwing it up, from Mammoth extinction to re-shaping Australia.
- We've done a great job of using science to mess up the world, hey now lets use science to clean it up.
- We're just getting started. The next step for humans and science is to intelligently manage the earth (sort of like those old Star Trek shows where they terraform a planet), but we better get started soon before its too late.
All in all, a good read, not too preachy, and with a new look and a positive approach in that we don't need to try to undo what's happened, but just intelligently take stock and make moves based on that. Most of these types of books are anti-science. This is pro-science, but use it for productive things: sequestering carbon in the soil where it can aid agriculture (not in caverns where it's useless), and maybe even, when and if it becomes possible, bring back the mammoth!
